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The Reform of
Qatar University
Joy S. Moini, Tora K. Bikson, C. Richard Neu, Laura DeSisto
With
Mohammed Al Hamadi, Sheikha Jabor Al Thani
Foreword by
Sheikha Al Misnad
RAND-QATAR POLICY INSTITUTE
The research described in this report was conducted within R AND
Education and the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute, programs of the RAND
Corporation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The reform of Qatar University / Joy S. Moini ... [et al.] ; with Mohammed Al Hamadi,
Sheikha Jabor Al Thani.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8330-4744-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Jami’at Qatar. 2. Educational change—Qatar. I. Moini, Joy S.
LG358.D38R44 2009
378.5363—dc22
2009025069
Cover photo courtesy Qatar University
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Summary
Introduction
In August 2003, His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani,
the Emir of Qatar, appointed a new President, Sheikha Al Misnad, and
other senior officers of Qatar University (QU), giving the new administration a broad mandate to reform and to strengthen the University. In October 2003, the Diwan Amiri1 engaged the RAND-Qatar
Policy Institute (RQPI) to assist the new QU leadership in designing
and implementing a major reform of the University. This monograph
recounts the motivation for the reform effort, describes the design of
the reform agenda, and details the early stages of the implementation
effort, with an eye toward identifying challenges yet to be met.
The State of Qatar
Qatar is a small monarchy on the Arabian Peninsula approximately
the size of the state of Connecticut, bordered only by Saudi Arabia,
to the southwest. From 2004 to 2008, the population doubled from
nearly 750,000 to some 1.5 million; however, only about 20 percent
are Qatari nationals; the rest comprise expatriate workers and their
families.
With the world’s third largest natural gas reserves, Qatar is a prosperous country. Under the current Emir, Qatar has aggressively pursued modernization, including economic and social development. As
part of these modernization efforts, major reforms of health care and
education have been undertaken, the latter aimed, in part, at preparing
1
The administrative office of the Emir.
xvii
xviii
The Reform of Qatar University
Qataris to assume more of the professional positions formerly held by
expatriates. “Qatarization” of professional jobs is a high priority.
Education in Qatar
Recognizing the need for a better-prepared workforce, the Emir has
made reform and strengthening of education in Qatar a high priority
since the early years of his rule and directed a number of initiatives
aimed at improving educational opportunities for young Qataris.
The first of these initiatives—chronologically—was the creation
of an Education City in Doha. Both a physical campus and an administrative apparatus, Education City hosts a variety of educational,
research, and cultural institutions, including branch campuses of leading foreign universities. In addition, though not formally a part of Education City, other branch campuses that offer technical training and
vocationally oriented education have been set up in Doha.
The second major education initiative in Qatar was the establishment of a system of state-funded “Independent schools” serving students eligible for state-supported K–12 education aimed at providing
autonomy, accountability, variety, and choice for parents and students
in Qatar. The first 12 Independent schools opened in the fall of 2004.
Additional Independent schools have opened in each succeeding year.
The Education City branch campuses cannot accommodate—and
were never intended to accommodate—the large majority of Qatari
secondary school graduates who sought academically oriented higher
education but did not qualify for or chose not to attend foreign universities. For these graduates, Qatar University was the traditional and
still most appropriate option. By 2003, the need to strengthen QU to
meet the needs of a new generation of young Qataris was apparent. The
principal piece missing from Qatar’s overall education reform agenda
was the reform of Qatar University.
Qatar University
The institution that became Qatar University began in 1973 as a College of Education. The University was formally established by Emiri
decree in 1977, and by 2003 had six colleges: Education; Humanities
Summary
xix
and Social Sciences; Science; Sharia, Law, and Islamic Studies; Engineering; and Business and Economics.
QU is a state institution, and the state provides the bulk of the
resources necessary for its operation. Although the Emiri decree that
established the University guaranteed its autonomy, this autonomy
had never been achieved in practice. The University’s budget allocations had to be approved by the Ministry of Finance, and organization
charts, staffing plans, and personnel actions had to be approved by the
Ministry of Civil Service Affairs and Housing.
At the beginning of the reform effort, the University enrolled
a total of about 8,600 students, about three-quarters of whom were
women. The University provided separate campuses for men and for
women, and all classes and extracurricular activities were gendersegregated.
Each college of the University awarded bachelor’s degrees in
its areas of specialization, and two of the colleges offered postgraduate degrees. The language of instruction in three of the University’s
colleges—Engineering, Science, and Business and Economics—was
English. The remaining three colleges taught in Arabic.
Admissions standards were also set separately by each college of
the University. In effect, students were accepted by and subsequently
enrolled in a particular college rather than in the larger University.
When the reform effort began in 2003, QU had about 400 faculty members. Although the University had no formal system of granting tenure, Qatari faculty members were, in effect, appointed for life.
Expatriate faculty were usually on renewable one-year contracts. There
was no formal appraisal system. Expatriate faculty members were paid
less than Qatari faculty, and, relative to other universities in the Gulf
region, salaries were low for all faculty.
Before the reform, the University operated five research centers
established to conduct applied research.2 But these centers were not
2
The centers were the Scientific Applied Research Center, the Sira and Sunna Research
Center, the Educational Research Center, the Documentation and Humanities Research
Center, and the National Center for Economic Research.
xx
The Reform of Qatar University
closely affiliated with University’s colleges, and academic and research
activities were not well coordinated.
The Need for Reform
In its earlier years, Qatar University had been regarded by many
observers—both inside and outside Qatar—as one of the better universities in the Middle East. By a number of measures, however, the
University’s performance had been deteriorating for several years before
the reforms were launched. Among the most prominent problems were
the lengthening time that students required to complete their degree
programs and the growing fraction of graduating students who did so
with very poor grades. Qualitative indicators of student engagement
also suggested problems—particularly among male students. Anecdotal reports abounded of poor student class attendance, lackadaisical
approaches to studies, and occasional hectoring of faculty by students
or parents about grades. Few extracurricular activities were available to
students. At the beginning of the reform effort, students, faculty, and
administrators agreed that no University community existed in any
meaningful sense.
By some objective measures, the quality of the faculty was also
declining. Within a faculty of roughly constant size, the number of
lecturers (as opposed to assistant professors and professors) was rising,
and the number of full professors had fallen sharply in the years before
the reform. More-qualitative measures also suggested problems with
the faculty. Morale was widely reported to be low.
In the years leading up to the reform effort, the University’s internal administration had become increasingly centralized. Faculty complained that the central administration was usurping authorities that
had traditionally rested with the faculty and with academic departments. There was growing estrangement between the central administration and the faculty.
In 2003, the University had no written compilation of procedures
documenting how important academic or administrative processes were
to be conducted. Key aspects of University life were handled through
Summary
xxi
sometimes inconsistent improvisation or governed by long-standing
but unwritten tradition.
The University was also facing financial difficulties. In the decade
before the reforms began, University funding had not kept pace with
the rising numbers of students.
Finally and most importantly, evidence was accumulating by
2003 that the University was failing to meet the needs of the larger
Qatari society. Employers in Qatar—in both the public and private
sectors—reported that few University graduates met required standards for employment.
By the summer of 2003, then, reforms of some key elements of
Qatar’s educational system were well under way. Action in other parts
of the Qatari educational system served to make the absence of reform
in the national university increasingly conspicuous—especially since
both objective and perceptual indicators of University performance
had been deteriorating for several years. It was against this backdrop
that a major overhaul of Qatar University was launched in the fall of
2003.
Designing the Reform Agenda
The fundamental principle guiding the reform effort was that QU
itself—its leading faculty and administrators—had to initiate and lead
the reform. The reasons were threefold: University faculty knew better
than anyone else QU’s strengths and weaknesses; successful reform
depended on faculty and staff ownership of the effort; and a key objective was to imbue QU with the capacity for continuing self-assessment
and adjustment. At the same time, the critical role of impartial outside
experts was understood.
A Senior Reform Committee (SRC) comprising senior QU members and outside experts from top universities in the United States and
United Kingdom served as a forum for discussion about QU’s mission
and helped shape reform proposals. A reform project staff composed
of both QU and RQPI members served as secretariat to the SRC. The
SRC set about articulating the objectives of the reform as well as the
principal obstacles.
xxii
The Reform of Qatar University
The SRC first defined the appropriate mission of QU. This mission included being the major post-secondary school option for qualified Qatari students, serving as the principal reservoir of knowledge
and expertise for the developing state, setting standards for the nation’s
social development, recognizing intellectual expertise and achievement,
promoting informed discussion of key issues facing the nation, and
promoting understanding of these issues. The SRC also articulated the
need for a core curriculum for all students in addition to the courses
in their areas of specialization and emphasized that QU should remain
primarily an undergraduate institution.
The SRC identified seven major impediments to the University
fulfilling its mission: inadequate administrative infrastructure, excessive administrative centralization, failure of academic and administrative structures to keep pace with changing educational demands and
trends, lack of systematic academic planning, lack of cohesion among
the individual academic programs, inadequate faculty quality, and lack
of faculty commitment to QU’s mission.
In the first year, the SRC proposed to the Emir a set of reforms
consisting of seven recommendations:
1. Establish autonomy by creating a Board of Regents that would
oversee the University.
2. Decentralize the administrative arrangements.
3. Modify the academic structure by unifying the colleges and
integrating research and academic activities.
4. Institute a core curriculum for all students.
5. Introduce university-wide academic planning.
6. Improve the management of faculty and staff by improving
compensation, linking pay with performance, and introducing
tenure and other reforms.
7. Foster and support student achievement by enforcing admission
standards and expanding services for students.
The recommendations were presented to the Emir with a set
of specific requests, which he approved. Implementation began
immediately.
Summary
xxiii
Implementing the Reform Agenda
One of the biggest challenges to implementing the changes was the
bureaucratic structure that was in place at the beginning of the reform.
The first step in the reform effort was to restructure QU’s administration to create university self-governance.
Noteworthy in the reform effort is the time frame in which most
of the reforms were completed and the fact that each of the recommended reform initiatives has either been completed or is in progress.
To assess further the success of the initiative, the SRC recommended
developing and implementing a prospective evaluation system to track
performance improvement.
Reflections on the Reform Strategy
The reforms proposed for Qatar University were extensive, touching virtually every constituency in the University community. In retrospect,
several factors or conditions made such sweeping reform possible:
t Timing of the reform. The effort took advantage of the momentum
created by the social, economic, educational, and governmental
transformation in process in the country.
t Organization and sequencing of reform. Organization of the effort
into distinct phases allowed for modular completion of activities
and created milestones for measurement of progress as well as
opportunities for reflection.
t Strong leadership. The leadership of QU’s president as well as the
recruitment and retraining of strong college, department, and
program directors was critical.
t University as the primary actor. Recognition of the need for QU
to reform itself and the coordination of activities by the internal
Office of Institutional Planning and Development were key to
progress.
t Support from outside experts. Strong trusting relationships were
formed with the external advisors and technical consultants, who
acted as sounding boards.
xxiv
The Reform of Qatar University
Nevertheless, designing and implementing the reform agenda
involved difficult choices:
t Academic standards versus social norms. Faced with preserving
the status quo, in which a university education was available to
all nationals, or upholding academic standards, the administration decided that QU would uphold its new standards and aim
to serve average and above-average students, while expanding its
preparatory Foundation Program.
t Pragmatism versus ambition. The SRC recommended that QU
aspire to goals that could realistically be achieved in a few years
while making provisions for more ambitious expansion later.
t Well-established versus innovative academic structures. Rather than
attempting a more innovative academic structure that would
involve combining the Colleges of Science and Engineering, the
QU leadership chose the more traditional path of creating a College of Arts and Sciences, with responsibility for delivering the
core curriculum as well as its own programs.
t University service versus scholarly development. Faced with the difficult decision of whether to assign a number of promising young
faculty members to key administrative positions or to allow them
to pursue and build their own academic careers, QU’s president
had little choice but to assign them to the leadership positions,
with the hope that they might eventually be able to return to
teaching and research.
t Rapid versus gradual reform. The rapid pace of reform had the
advantage of creating a self-perpetuating momentum and leaving
little time for opposition. However, the University paid a price for
proceeding so rapidly, as the result was considerable confusion
and some resistance to change.
t Efficiency versus inclusiveness. Likewise, faced with the choice of
trying to bring the entire faculty along at once (some of whom
resisted change) or enlisting a growing circle of respected faculty
who were supportive of change, the President chose the latter alternative. Although her decision did not ensure unanimity of views
Summary
xxv
and had its costs (some faculty felt disenfranchised and some left
QU), the QU leadership does not regret this choice.
The Challenges Ahead
Since the launch of QU’s reforms in 2003, the academic infrastructure, programs, and policies envisioned in the original reform agenda
have already undergone some adjustment. However, these adjustments
have originated from within the newly autonomous university without
deferring to outside authorities or relying on outside assistance.
Several tests remain for the reformed university:
t At present, the most pressing academic challenge remains the
completion of the core curriculum.
t The next major test for the reforms will occur when the current
administration is replaced by the next generation of leaders.
t It remains possible that the university’s autonomy may be tested
by demands placed on it by the state, which provides the bulk of
the financial resources on which the university depends.
t Finally, and more broadly, the university must complete the
realignment of faculty and student attitudes, expectations, and
behaviors that the reform has begun. This realignment is beginning to be felt in a new acceptance of accountability and recognition of individual responsibility, but it is something that must
emerge over time and cannot be enforced from the top.
The QU reforms have brought changes in the structure and organization of the University. They have also prompted the beginnings of
change in the less formal and less easily controlled spirit of the University. Completing these latter changes and making them enduring are
the challenging tasks that QU must confront in the coming years.